“Sola? Absurd, on the face of it, but true somewhere beneath, and when he pushed off from the harbor mine, that truth helped drive him to shore.”

S., fortunately, finds a mine in the water to hold on to while he gathers his thoughts. He realizes that he wants to be the kind of person that would swim the rest of the distance to shore. He wishes that he could proudly inform the woman at the bar of his conclusion before he realizes that this woman may have been Sola. Just that thought gives him enough drive to leave the mine and swim to shore.

Here is a pivotal moment in the text because now that S. has made the connection between the woman in the bar and Sola he has another purpose in his life; he is no longer just living to rediscover his identity, but instead also living to reunite with Sola.

The notes between Jen and Eric are similar to those on page 71 in that they are mainly centered around whether or not Vaclav Straka was V.M. Straka:

Do you know about Rybarik? The guy who said he knew Vaclav Straka from the factory? He said V was madly in love w/a girl who always worked there + jumped off the bridge when she turned him down.

Did she ever confirm that?

No one knows who she was (or if she existed). Rybarik couldn’t remember her name.

JEEZ. You’d think that he’d at least try to make one up.

I know, as Straka frauds go, his wasn’t very good.

I think it’s fair at this point to cross Vaclav Straka as one of the potential candidates for our mysterious author.

Jen and Eric also flag another one of FXC’s footnotes, but can’t seem to find any clues within it:

More “critics” who didn’t exist. Flag this one for poss. coding?

Not getting anything yet, you?

A red herring?

While there is definitely something fishy about the footnotes in Chapter 3, they are still yet to give us any genuine clues.